Lights that Lead us
by emeraldwolf
Summary: Nightcrawler and Angel have a conversation on the rooftop. The title is part of a lyric from the Oasis song Wonderwall. I was listening to it while I wrote this. Enjoy. oneshot


This is gonna be a one-shot. I know, nobody likes one-shots. But hey, it's a miracle people!!! I wrote another X-Men Evolution fanfic. ^_^ and even I thought my first would be my last. Ah well. Enjoy.  
  
READ THIS: This fanfic takes place right after "Under Lock and Key". That is the episode where Angel shows up while the X-Men are playing baseball, and the five originals go to stop the spider that is released from the key. Okay...now you can read the story. ^_^  
  
* * * * * * * * * * *  
  
Kurt walked down the hallway of the institute, restless and tired all at the same time. He reached up and wiped at his eyes with his fist, just at the right moment.  
  
The door next to him was opened and Kitty came walking out. She hadn't turned any lights on, leaving the room and hallway in darkness, and with her mind clouded with sleep she wasn't watching where she was going. Kitty screamed and jumped back at the shadowy figure walking by, its tail swishing close enough to her leg that she could feel the wind from it.  
  
"It's just me Kitty." A sad voice replied, followed by a yawn. Kitty could see the sharpened white teeth glint in the faint moonlight trickling in through the window.  
  
"Sorry. You caught me by surprise?" Kitty could tell it sounded like a cheap excuse. It wasn't her fault she didn't have the night vision of some of the other mutants at the school.  
  
"Sure." Kurt had a lot on his mind and didn't really want to have another right now. He made his way to his room without further delay.  
  
The warm summer's wind brought with it the smell of water and flowers from the front of the mansion. It didn't matter what season, Kurt didn't think he'd be able to sleep without his windows open. Even the lovely scented air couldn't make his untouched bed look appeasing though.  
  
He sighed and walked to the balcony of his room. Only certain rooms in the institute came with balconies. How the professor had decided he needed one was beyond him. 'He probably read my mind. Duh.'  
  
Kurt hopped up onto the banister of his balcony, his toes comfortably wrapping around the bars, his tail balancing him out of habit. The wind blew and ruffled his hand and sent a shiver through him. Though he hadn't been there, the others had told him about the spider, and the keys to the door.  
  
There was a small sound up on the roof of the mansion and Kurt spun nimbly around. He could see in the dim moonlight as well as at noon, and caught something light go by on the roof of the mansion.  
  
"Not on my watch." Kurt felt like someone out of a cop show and carefully climbed up the wall to the roof. His feet and hands were perfect for this kind of work, and he was silent as he ascended the many platforms and tower- like walls of the mansion.  
  
He was close to the thing on top of the roof. He could see a head. Blond hair. As Nightcrawler lifted his head higher, he got a perfect view of his quarry sitting cross-legged on the very uppermost part of the mansion. And he saw his white wings.  
  
"Ahem." Kurt coughed politely. The man named Warren turned and looked at him, not quite surprised but yet not expecting.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
Kurt didn't really know what to say. 'Get off the roof, you're disturbing my angst time.' He mentally shook his head. Angel had as much of a right to be sitting in the middle of the night as he did. He had actually been on the most recent mission.  
  
"Uh. I was just wondering why you were up here?" Kurt walked over on all fours till he was on the same piece of roof as Warren. It sloped down towards the dangerous 50 ft drop. But a drop like that was nothing to a person who could fly, or to a teleporter.  
  
"I just needed time to think. What are you doing here?" Warren turned, and for the first time Kurt noticed that he had blue eyes. He also seemed to be smiling. Just the slightest.  
  
"Ah. I was doing the same thing. My room is down there." He pointed with one blue finger, and suddenly felt self-conscious. He pulled his hand back quickly and regretted not having his holowatch with him.  
  
Kurt tried not to let himself stare at Angel. The man was off in his own world anyway, staring at the beautiful view of the stars. He was blond and well built. Tall and....normal. Kurt wasn't an idiot, he had seen how every girl in the mansion looked at Warren. Especially with his huge white wings. It finally clicked in his mind that he was sitting on the roof, in the moonlight, with a shirtless Warren who kept flexing his wings. 'Oh, if only the girls knew.'  
  
The two sat in silence, staring at the same moon. A guilty angel and innocent demon.  
  
Every minute or so, Warren would shift the way he was sitting, pulling his wings closer to him, then farther away. Kurt watched this a few times. On the fourth time that Angel did his fidget, Kurt flipped his tail to the other side of his body. Angel's eyes flicked to this movement, but brushed it off just as quickly.  
  
Angel shifted his wings again and Kurt flipped his tail. Shift. Flip. Shift. Flip.  
  
Kurt was grinning like a maniac, his eyes trained straight ahead of him, towards the dark horizon, barely visible at night. After about the sixth time Warren was convinced the Kurt was doing it on purpose.  
  
"Why do you keep doing that?" His voice was cold and impatient.  
  
"Sorry. I didn't know it was bothering you." Kurt looked away. He thought that it was some strange game. Apparently he had been playing alone.  
  
"It's not really bothering me." Angel watched the tail as it sat motionless on the roof. Kurt followed his eyes and pulled his tail around to the other side, out of sight of the man next to him. The one that wasn't blue and fuzzy.  
  
"What's it like?" Kurt found it strange that even in the rare quiet of the mansion roof he couldn't hear Angel's voice when he whispered like that.  
  
"What's what like?" Kurt turned to face the man head on, sticking his tail out to try and balance himself as he maneuvered around the roof.  
  
"To have a tail."  
  
"What's it like to have wings?" Kurt countered with a smirk. Warren finally seemed to warm up to the young elf and smiled.  
  
"Not all it's cracked up to be." Kurt let out a chuckle at this. 'Just like the angsty angel to say something like that.'  
  
"It has to be better than looking like this though." His looks didn't bother him as much as they used to and Kurt motioned to his fur and pointy ears.  
  
"At least people don't expect things from you." Warren leaned back on one hand, sticking his foot out over the edge of the roof. His blue pajama pants fluttered in the light wind.  
  
"What do you mean?" Kurt rocked onto his feet and stood up, cracking his back. He crouched down, his favorite position, and watched Warren's face become more serious, back to his cold ways.  
  
"Just cause I have these things sticking out of my back," he motioned to the wings splayed across the shingles, "People expect me to be holy or something. They want me to save them. Or-" He suddenly stopped.  
  
"Or?" Kurt pried, leaning closer.  
  
"Nothing." Angel drew his wings closer to himself. He didn't realize that he had so quickly started talking to this boy he barely knew. And it wasn't even that he could reason it away with them having so much in common. He looked at the mutant's blue fur, and the snake-like tail. He definitely didn't look pleasant, like something that should be in a teen horror movie.  
  
"So, is your body your whole mutation?" Kurt said, sensing a need for a change in subject. Warren just raised an eyebrow at the question.  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
Kurt stood up again, feeling the chill start to make his body tingle with pins and needles. He pointed with one of his large fingers at the white- feathered wings spread out behind Angel.  
  
"Your wings are your mutation, but do you have any other powers with it?"  
  
Angel blinked.  
  
"Like the powers the others have. Making ice, reading peoples thoughts, that kind of thing?"  
  
"Well yeah." Kurt grinned. 'Maybe he has some cool ability no one knows about.'  
  
"Not really. I can see unusually well. But nothing like the other X-Men."  
  
"Oh." Kurt sounded a little disappointed and started to pace up and down the steep roof, balancing and testing his bodies own abilities.  
  
"So what about you? Did you end up with the short end of the stick with your powers?" Warren bit his tongue as soon as he let it slip. He didn't mean to always be so condescending.  
  
"Not really." Kurt turned to look at him, standing on the peak of the roof, balancing very carefully on the tip. "I mean, the whole furry thing is not always a good thing. But I got compensated for it."  
  
In a flash of blue smoke, Nightcrawler was gone. Warren's jaw fell open and he looked around for the small boy. 'He's gone.'  
  
He smelt something like rotten eggs before there was a thump on his other side. He stood up and whipped around, only to see Kurt grinning at him again.  
  
"How did you do that?"  
  
"It's my real power. I teleport." Angel heard two bamfs ring out in the air and Kurt was behind him again.  
  
"That has to be helpful," he said with a mischievous glint in his eyes. "Do you have to concentrate to do it?" Angel took a step closer, crossing his arms across his bare chest and feigning intense interest in Kurt's answer.  
  
"Well, when I was first learning it was hard. But now it's a piece of cake." Kurt put his hands on his hips and stuck his nose up.  
  
"That's good." Angel rushed forward and pushed Kurt straight off the roof. His white eyes grew wide as he fell back, his body turning over immediately so he could see where he was falling.  
  
Bamf. Nightcrawler fell the foot that he had miscalculated and landed face first onto the roof shingles. They smelled like old rain. Immediately he leapt up and glared up at the taller blond man.  
  
"Hey man. What'd you do that for?" Kurt was practically shouting but Angel just smiled down at him. 'Wait a sec...he's smiling?'  
  
"They say pride comes before the fall."  
  
Kurt sank down to his knees in exasperation.  
  
"That is a really bad joke." He snorted and his tail flicked angrily behind him. Angel sat down on the edge again, dangling both legs over it this time. Kurt seriously thought about pushing him off, but wasn't sure if he could move somebody as big and muscular as Warren.  
  
"Besides, either you were telling the truth and would have saved yourself. Or I would have done it for you."  
  
"I thought you said you didn't save people." Kurt scooted over to the edge and copied the taller mutant. His two toed feet swung next to the tan five toed ones. But this time Kurt didn't feel quite as ashamed of how he looked.  
  
"That wasn't the kind of saving I meant. Flying down and catching someone is a lot easier than getting them to heaven." His bright blue eyes trailed up to the stars and moon as his words fell quieter and quieter.  
  
"At least they have hope in you. It's better than fear." When Warren turned back to face Kurt, he had his face down, studying his own hands.  
  
"All mutants are feared-"  
  
"But not by other mutants. Every new mutant who comes here screams, or steps back when they see me."  
  
"They they're fools." Kurt head snapped up and he smiled at the kind face he had managed to pry out of the cold angel.  
  
"Thank you." He said quietly, though he knew Warren heard it.  
  
"No problem." The demon and angel looked to the moon again. An insignificant blue and white speck in the moon's sight, but better than just a white spot, or just a blue.  
  
"Do you ever wish you looked different?" Kurt asked.  
  
"Sometimes. Do you?" Angel looked him in the eyes.  
  
"Yes," Kurt smiled. "But not right now."  
  
Angel stood and Kurt followed. He pulled his wings back and there was an audible cracking of joints. Kurt swished his tail around, which had started to fall asleep from sitting in the same position.  
  
"I leave to go back to the city tomorrow." Angel ran an almost nervous hand through his hair.  
  
"Back to people who don't see you for who you are." Kurt shivered and rubbed his arms. He hadn't noticed how cold he had become throughout the night, which was slipping slowly into day.  
  
"Yet you claim to live with people who don't see you either."  
  
Kurt took a deep breath. He felt it sometimes. The truth that the older man was speaking. He nodded his answer silently.  
  
"If you want to talk or get away, you know you can come to me." Not quite knowing why, Angel reached out and ruffled Kurt's hair.  
  
"Careful. I might just take up that offer." Kurt grinned and bared his pointed fangs.  
  
"I think I can risk it." Angel bent down slightly and spread his wings, leaping off the rooftop like it was nothing. Kurt watched him circle the mansion towards his room for a minute. The professor had given him one of the room's with a balcony too.  
  
He shoulders moved with every powerful flap of his wings. The feathers adjusting to the wind and moving him where he pleased. The wind lifted him, easing the strain on his body. Kurt looked away and saw the beginning of the sunrise. Gray and daunting on the horizon. He ported to his balcony and sat for a few minutes. This is the day he'd lose a soul mate he never knew he had.  
  
Angel, the only one who could understand the demon.  
  
The End. I hope you enjoyed. 


End file.
